Phonemic Awareness

For students who struggle with reading at a foundational level, phonemic awareness is often the missing piece.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. Without this skill, reading and spelling can feel confusing and frustrating no matter how hard a child tries.

At Learning Solution, I use Foundation in Sounds, a structured, research-based program designed to build these critical skills from the ground up.

This program is especially helpful for students who:

• Cannot consistently sound out simple words

• Struggle to blend sounds together

• Have difficulty hearing individual sounds in words

• Guess at words instead of decoding

• Have not made progress with traditional phonics instruction

What this looks like:

• Listening-based activities (no letters at first)

• Breaking words into individual sounds

• Blending sounds to form words

• Identifying sound positions (beginning, middle, end)

• Gradually connecting sounds to letters

By strengthening these skills, students develop the foundation needed for successful reading and spelling.

This is often the first and most important step before or alongside structured literacy instruction.